Green and high-quality development is an inevitable requirement for building a beautiful China in the new era, which is directly related to the new journey of China's socialist modernization for a longer period of time after the 14th Five-Year Plan. The possible marginal contribution of the article lies in:based on the literature review, the research hypothesis is put forward through theoretical analysis, and the research object is 108 prefecture-level cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, constructing the 2003-2018 smog pollution (PM_2.5) concentration data. At the same time, it is characterized by GTFP that reflects the connotation of high-quality development, and tries to incorporate haze pollution, human capital and economic quality into a unified framework. The mediation effect model and the instrumental variable method are comprehensively used to reveal the mechanism and effect of haze pollution on high-quality economic development from the perspective of human capital. The results show that for every increase of 1 unit of haze pollutants is represented by PM_2.5 during the sample period, the quality of green economy development decreases by 8.4%; the direct effect of haze pollution on economic quality is -0.064, and the subsequent indirect effect conducted through the intermediary of human capital is -0.020. Further analysis shows that haze pollution has obvious heterogeneity to the green and high-quality development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt. Among them, haze pollution has a greater negative impact on the human capital of downstream cities, which in turn affects economic quality. The inhibitory effect is also significantly higher than that of the city of the middle and upper reaches, and the damage effect of haze pollution has increased after 2013. After overcoming a series of robustness tests such as endogeneity, replacement of explained variables, sample shrinkage processing, and lagging one-period regression, the research conclusions are still valid. The policy significance is that it can provides useful enlightenment to effectively control smog and promote economic development in green and high-quality manners. It is recommended to strengthen regional coordination, guide various regions to balance the relationship between environmental protection and economic development, promote the steady improvement and common development of economic quality. We should promote the complementarity of resources and functional integration in the region based on resource, and add impetus to the high-quality development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt. We should promote the development of characteristics and exert the clustering effect, pushing the green transformation and upgrading the industrial structure with market-based regulatory means. We should increase the financial investment in public services such as medicine and education, and improve the level of social welfare, accumulate the stock of human capital, and give full play to the impact of human capital for the potential of economic development to promote innovative development. We should optimize the linkage mechanism, coordinate the establishment of the Yangtze River Economic Belt responsibility sharing and benefit coordination mechanism, promote high-quality development, and set a benchmark for accelerating the construction of a new development pattern.